Verizon says it supports open Internet rules despite its role in ending them.

No major Internet service provider has done more to prevent implementation of net neutrality rules in the US than Verizon. After years of fighting the rules in courts of law and public opinion, Verizon is about to get what it wants as the Federal Communications Commission—now led by a former Verizon lawyer—prepares to eliminate the rules and the legal authority that allows them to be enforced.

But Verizon's general counsel, Craig Silliman, wants you to believe that Verizon never opposed net neutrality rules, even though it sued the FCC to eliminate them. He's also making the claim that the FCC isn't even talking about eliminating the net neutrality rules, even though FCC Chairman Ajit Pai is proposing to do exactly that.

Further Reading

Verizon on Friday released a video in which Silliman made these claims. "The FCC is not talking about killing the net neutrality rules, and in fact not we nor any other ISP are asking them to kill the open Internet rules," Silliman said. "All they're doing is looking to put the open Internet rules in an enforceable way on a different legal footing."

Verizon general counsel Craig Silliman on net neutrality.

Verizon opposed net neutrality before Title II

Like other ISPs, Verizon claims that it supports the core net neutrality rules that forbid ISPs from blocking, throttling, or prioritizing Internet content in exchange for payment, while opposing only the use of the FCC's common carrier (or "Title II") authority to enforce those rules.

Other ISPs might be able to make this claim more plausibly than Verizon. But Verizon has long opposed these net neutrality rules even when they're implemented without the FCC's Title II authority.

The FCC approved net neutrality rules in 2010 without reclassifying ISPs as common carriers. If ISPs didn't object to that decision, we might have net neutrality rules without common carrier regulation today. But Verizon sued the FCC, while saying during oral arguments that it would charge websites for prioritization if not for the net neutrality rules. Verizon ended up winning a federal appeals court decision in 2014 that said the FCC erred by imposing the rules without first reclassifying ISPs.

To rectify that legal mistake, the FCC's Democratic leadership finally reclassified ISPs as common carriers in 2015 in order to put the original rules back on the books and implement a few new ones. But now Pai, who was Verizon associate general counsel from 2001 to 2003, is using his new status as FCC chairman to reverse the Title II classification.

Further Reading

Silliman's claim that "the FCC is not talking about killing the net neutrality rules" is contradicted by the text of Pai's proposal. To begin with, simply shifting the rules to a new legal regime might not work because of Verizon's previous victory in court. Beyond that, Pai's proposal says that the rules against blocking, throttling, and paid prioritization were issued "despite virtually no quantifiable evidence of consumer harm." The proposal goes on to suggest that ISPs throttling Internet websites and applications might somehow be good for customers and that a ban on paid prioritization may be "suppress[ing] pro-competitive activity."

Pai's proposal does seek public comment on whether the no-blocking rule can be reinstated using different legal authority. But the statements on throttling and paid prioritization show that the FCC isn't simply talking about using different authority to implement rules identical to the current ones.

In the Verizon video, Silliman went on to say that the FCC's use of Title II authority is like a mayor taking control over homeowners' properties and that the FCC took control over "how we price things." In reality, the FCC hasn't regulated the prices of home Internet service. (Congress could implement net neutrality rules itself without using common carrier authority, but Silliman didn't address that possibility in the video.)

Silliman did make one point that net neutrality advocates would at least partially agree with. A lot of people are stretching the truth over net neutrality, he said.

"You've got to understand, there are a lot of advocacy groups out there that fundraise on this issue," Silliman said. "So how do you fundraise? You stir people up with outrageous claims. Unfortunately, we live in a time where people have discovered, it doesn't matter what's true. You just say things to rile up a base."